Second Glenrue-Ballyorgan photobook launched

Glenrue-Ballyorgan Vol. 2 Photobook was launched remotely, due to Covid19 restrictions, just before Christmas 2021. The honour of launching the book was given to the ‘Lady of the Parish’, Sr Alphonsus (Kathleen Moore) of Rupplagh. Kathleen holds the honour of being the oldest Glenrue-Ballyorgan person alive today! Sr. Kathleen was born on 18th May, 1919 and will be 103 years young this coming May.

Kathleen started school in ‘Scoil Mhuire’, Glenrue in March 1925, where she was taught by the then principal, Mr. Michael McNamee NT. Mr McNamee was a very religious man himself and he went on to inspire a phenomenal number of his past pupils to follow religious lives later on.

CONVENT LIFE

Kathleen had four brothers (Michael, Jimmy, Ned and John) and two sisters, Mary and Nellie. All her siblings have passed on but Kathleen is still hale and hearty, in the Loreto Convent in Kilkenny.

Kathleen joined the Loreto Sisters shortly after her 17th year in 1937. In those days life was not easy in any convent and Kathleen didn’t see Glenrue again for decades. Even when her father John Moore (b. 1885, a veteran of the Boer War) and her mother Ellen (b. 1889, née Mortell) died, she was not allowed out to attend their funerals!

That all changed after the 2nd Vatican Council, in the early 1960s, and Kathleen went on to become a much-travelled nun, both at home and abroad, after that. With her newly found freedom, she soon began to visit home in Glenrue regularly, with her grandniece Shirley Sheerin (Kilfinane) as her chauffeur, to see old friends and neighbours. Some of her favourite calls around Glenrue were to see Mary Malone, Biddy Keane, Mrs Alice O’Callaghan, Dorella Hanley and Kitty O’Sullivan.

Kathleen celebrated her ‘oak’ anniversary (80 years as a nun) in 2017! She was based all her life between the Loreto convents of Fermoy, Clonmel and Youghal. Since 2011, she has resided in the Loreto Convent in Kilkenny.

Blessed with a fine singing voice, Kathleen loves nothing better that to sing her favourite song ‘ Famous Kildorrery Town’.

VOLUME 2

In 2019, Kathleen was so thrilled to receive a copy of Glenrue-Ballyorgan Photobook Vol. 1, launched that year. Now she is again thrilled to be to have been part of Vol. 2 and to have another 1,000 or so photos from around her old homeplace which to browse! Long may Kathleen enjoy reminiscing once again about her youth and her many, sadly, departed friends in Glenrue-Ballyorgan.